"Fearful Asymmetry," Randall McLeod, University of Toronto

Randall McLeod is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and a widely published textual critic. His studies of Renaissance printing and binding in Europe amount to an archeology of the book, as he discovers layers of meaning in the material composition of texts by Shakespeare, Ariosto, and Donne. His bibliographical eye has been equally keen investigating later artists, rereading the physique of sonnets by Gerard Manley Hopkins and the promptbooks used by Sarah Siddons. In 2000, McLeod delivered the A. S. W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography. Awarded Guggenheim and Mellon fellowships, he has presented theories of "unediting" in essays—written variously under the names Random Cloud, Claudia Nimbus, Orlando F. Booke, and Random Clod—that have been both influential and inimitable.

"Enfolded by Holes: a talk on book openings," Tate Shaw, Visual Studies Workshop and Preacher’s Biscuit Books

Tate Shaw is Director of Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. He is a book artist and co-publisher of Preacher's Biscuit Books. His essays, interviews, reviews and reports on artists' books can be found in JAB, the Blue Notebook and Afterimage: the Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. He is coordinating the 10th Biennial Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference November 8–9, 2008.